Interesting thing is, that either before II WW either after, there were no special teaching of ukemi in Founder's dojo. That means, all students learned how to fall by themself, simply during reception of the techniques..

Happily, Jun answered this in his post.

Quote:

Szczepan Janczuk wrote:

Ukemi is learned reaction, and is not generic. So in fact, ukemi drill(i.e. exercises for rolling foreward or backward....) distroy natural sensivity of the body, and prevent student to progress to higher level of aikido secrets

Exactly what I said. Apparently you did not read my initial post properly. Ukemi is learned reaction - this is what I said:-

Quote:

you instinctively react with the reprogrammed survival instinct that places you in the position that allows you to be thrown at full force and get up and attack again afterwards

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In fact, the body's natural reaction to a fall is to flail outward with all limbs in an attempt to regain balance or brace (tense up) and protect the brain and major organs from damage at the sacrifice of the extremities if necessary (i.e broken limbs and joints). In fact, this is what happens when people don't learn Ukemi properly from the first day of training. I wonder how many records there are of folks who trained in koryu jujutsu without learning ukemi and got broken limbs etc. Of course chances are we will never know. Because something is old does not always make it immediately correct.

As Jun indicated, if we applied this "keeping the traditional way" concept blindly to other aspects of training, then it would take an extremely long time to become mediocre at Aikido technique, when those employing more systematic approaches to learning will have evolved way beyond what we could ever hope to achieve. So any "higher level of Aikido secrets" as you put it would also be unattainable, since there is no structure to your basic training, any hidden aspects will be shrouded in mystery until your training has developed to an extremely high degree over a ridiculously long period of time. Without a solid foundation there is no reaching the heights of knowledge. Similarly in Shu Ha Ri, one must achieve form before one can ever hope to break and then free himself from it by spontaneously manifesting his movements. Imo Ukemi training follows the same pattern.